Q. How did you become interested in Eastern Illinois University? Did you come here with the intention of majoring in theatre?

I did, actually. My sister, who is two years older than I, was going there, and I had visited her at school. I thought it would be a nice little haven to have my sister around during my first year in college, and the Theatre Arts Department really was a nice size department. You didn’t have to wait until you were a junior or senior to be in plays or to be on the main stage. That was very appealing to me.

Q. Did you concentrate on theatre classes right from the beginning?

I was required to take a certain amount of math and a certain amount of English — things like that. But my emphasis was immediately in theatre and I auditioned right away, within the first few weeks of school starting. There was an audition for the main stage show, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I got the part. I was so thrilled. I’ll never forget coming around the corner and looking on the call board and seeing my name up there.

Q. Why do you think you got the part?

I don’t know. You didn’t have to be a junior or senior, but I was probably lucky because I seem to recall that Anne Shapland ‘76 was student teaching that fall. She probably would have gotten the part because she was a wonderful actress and really one of the upperclassmen who starred in a lot of things.

Q. You did do some theatre work in high school?

Oh, yes. I basically started doing plays when I was a freshman in high school. It seemed like I was constantly doing something in the Theatre department. There was always a contest play, a regular main stage show, a speech contest, or something like that. I was really active in activities like that all throughout high school.

Q. Had you wanted to be an actress since childhood?

I think I did. I mean, there was no real way to express it all that much when you’re in grade school. There weren’t very many venues. At that time there wasn’t a community theatre in my hometown although I think there is now. I took ballet lessons, and I always enjoyed the spring program that we would do for our parents.

Q. Tell us what you remember about Eastern’s theatre arts faculty.

Dr. (E.G.) Gabbard was there at the time. And Clarence Blanchette. Well, I thought Clarence was like some exotic flower because he was very fascinating to me. I recall that Dr. (Gerald) Sullivan was really very supportive of all the students. Gabby was crazy. I remember us all congregating in his office one day, and he let us draw on his head with a marker. He said, “Aw, come on you guys. Go ahead, go ahead.” So we all took markers and drew on his head. He always had a lot of spirit. (Laugh.)

I also had Dr. (Jack) Rang for an oral interpretation class. He was a little more serious than the others.

Q. Today, Eastern’s Department of Theatre Arts requires its graduates to get a well-rounded theatre background — acting, makeup, lighting, stage design... Did the same hold true when you were an undergraduate?

Yes. It was very important that you get to participate in all aspects of the process although I was never very good at building sets. Tern McClure (a fellow student) was fabulous at doing that, but I was very good at cleaning up the shop, which I did quite often. They called me the “Dutchman Queen” because I did a lot of dutchmanning. That involved dipping strips of canvas in glue and joining flaps together for a backdrop that required a finished edge. I was good at that.

Q. What are some of your favorite memories of Eastern? Oh, I had a lot of fun. One thing that comes to mind, though, is climbing in a window of the Studio Theatre. We had forgotten something inside and so I was hoisted through the window at 11 o’clock at night. Trying to get into the building that night was fun. (Laugh)

Well, this really wasn’t fun, but I remember that Dr. Gabbard directed Death of a Salesman. He double-cast the part of Linda with me and Karen (Eubanks) Eldred ‘77. I remember getting sick and not being able to do about half of the performances. It was really great that it had been double-cast because someone else could do it. I also vividly remember doing a production of Glass Menagerie that Clarence directed (through the Charleston Community Theatre). I really loved doing that. There was An Evening of Women’s Poetry I remember that Donna (Shehorn) Rice had directed. I still remember this great poem, and I’d love to read it again, called “Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons.”

I also remember Dracula: Sabat which I believe Randy Arney ‘78 was in, also. We had bowls of alcohol that we had to light and bring on stage. It dripped over onto the sides of my hands and my hands were on fire, which hurt. That was pretty wild. It almost put the set on fire. It was a lot of fun because there really were a lot of good people there at the time. Interesting people!

I went through the tunnels (under campus) at night, too. I remember it being really, really hot, more than anything.

I also recall that I was always trying to get my hair to be straight because it was very curly, and at the time that was not cool. That’s why I wore a lot of babushkas and tried to flatten my hair.

Q. What can you tell us about Joan Allen, John Malkovich ex ‘75, and Eastern Illinois University?

John was, when I met him, beyond cool. He had long hair then, and bell bottoms and purple platform shoes. He had this very exotic existence of sharing a house with a bunch of hippies, basically. I was really drawn to him and probably terrified at the same time. I didn’t know what to make of him because I was just this naive little gal from a small town in northern Illinois.

I remember standing in the lobby of the theater building after my first semester talking to someone and John came over to me, stuck his finger through the belt loop in my jeans, and pulled me aside. I’m wondering, “What is this guy doing? And why is he doing it to me?”

He pulled me to the side and then he asked me to do an acting scene with him. It was from this Arthur Miller play called After the Fall. That was a really very cool experience and I think we actually did it for an English class that was studying the play. It was thrilling to work on the scene with him because he was the dark, mysterious, interesting guy in the Theatre Department. He didn’t usually get cast on the main stage because he did a lot of self-generated work, Harold Pinter and things like that. He was really the first one to introduce me to writers like Pinter and Edward Albee, as well as lonesco and absurdist playwriring. After I met John I would go to the library and just pull plays down off the shelf that I had never imagined existed. It opened a whole new world to me and that was pretty exciting, too.

John and I became friends after that. Once, I visited him during the summer over a weekend. That was a big deal for me to drive down and spend the weekend with him and his friends while he was doing Carousel for the summer. I got to see him do the play and then visited him when he transferred to Illinois Stare. That is also where I met all of the people involved in Steppenwolf. It was John that really got me involved with Steppenwolf. They started the company after they graduated although I was still in college because they were all a couple of years older than me. I had transferred to Northern for my last two years of school and he called me while I was there and asked me to do a play with the company during the summer.

I usually had to work during the summer. I had to make money to buy college clothes and the like. I asked my parents, “If I work now, can I take the summer off to do this play in Chicago?” They let me do it; so I worked at a dry cleaners bagging clothes to make my sum of money in the winter.

Q. Sounds like you had pretty supportive parents!

Yeah, I think so. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t do it, but I think they had their reservations about it. They kept telling me to have something to fall back on. That was good advice because my last year of school was spent mostly in the business department learning typing and shorthand. During my first several years with Steppenwolf, I had a full-time job as a secretary because we didn’t really make any money to speak of. My parents came through with that advice.

Q. So you became a member of Steppenwolf when you were a junior?

Well, I did a play with them between my junior and senior years. I went back, reluctantly, I have to say, for my senior year of school and joined them permanently after that. That would have been 1978. (Pause. Laugh.) Oh, God. It can’t be that long ago!

Q. One looks back on those early photos taken of the Steppenwolf ensemble...Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinese, Terry Kinney. Can you describe those relationships and comment on how they have continued or not continued over the years?

Well, I just had to pinch myself all the time once I joined that company. They were so gifted and I just was in heaven performing with them because I didn’t have to audition. I also didn’t have to be alone in a big city trying to make it as an actor. I went from two families, my home family and my school family, to another group of people who were extremely talented. I got to spend a long time working with them, learning and doing lots of plays. It was a glorious time; it really was a glorious time. The thing that’s really cool is that I knew it when it was happening. I just didn’t want to be anywhere else.

I admired everybody and their abilities. I learned a lot from them and we continue to stay in touch. I haven’t done a play in almost 10 years now because I’ve been doing mostly film work but we do stay in touch. I live in New York and a lot of the company members live in Los Angeles now, so I really don’t get to see them nearly as often as I used to. We all get together at least once or twice a year and do benefits for the theatre or whatever. There are a few members that I talk to regularly on the phone, but it’s always great when we see each other.

Q. Magazine articles always seem to mention how much you value your family life. Is it difficult to manage motherhood with your acting career?

It’s challenging. I waited a long time to have a child. I didn’t have my daughter until I was 37, so I had done a tremendous amount of things and had a lot of freedom. Once I decided to have a child, I really wanted to be able to experience being a mom, and I really didn’t want to have nannies raising her. I’ve had help, though. Believe me, I had to have help!

I’m spending a lot of money these days because I’m renovating an apartment, but my tendency in the past has been to really work and save my money. There’s always that rainy day or you may not get another part or whatever. I think that’s a thought that’s ingrained in many actors, actually. I had worked a long time and although I never made huge sums of money, I did tend to save what I did make. So, when I had my daughter, I had a nice little nest egg and didn’t work until I did a few days on a film called Mad Love. I did that when she was three months old. The major work that I did after her birth was Nixon. She was 14 months old at that time.

I got to spend that whole time just being with her, which was really great. Once you decide you really want a child, it’s great to be able to spend the time with her. On one hand, it is challenging to juggle family and career, and she’s going to be entering kindergarten next year. She’s not going to be as mobile then so we can’t just pick up and go. But, on the other hand, I think that there is something beneficial about the work that I do because I may do one film a year, which takes three months, and then I don’t have to work the rest of the year. I can just spend my time with her if that’s what I choose to do.

We’ve managed fairly well so far to stick together as a family. When I did Pleasantville, my husband was actually in Toronto doing a musical called Ragtime.

He was there for almost a year and we (Sadie and I) were with him for nine months of that time. I had Sadie with me for part of Face/Off but we were all able to spend Christmas together in Toronto. She didn’t go back with me when I returned to finish Face/Off.

When I was offered the part in Pleasantville, it was going to begin just a few weeks after Face/Off I told the director, “Well, the only way I can do it is if I have three-day weekends and you fly me home every weekend.” So that’s what I did when we filmed Pleasantville. I flew home every chance I had. We worked on the film about two months and every weekend I would take the red-eye from Los Angeles to Toronto. I would sleep on the plane and get to my doorstep at seven o’clock in the morning. Usually, I would have to return Monday evening or sometimes he (the director) would schedule it so I wouldn’t have to shoot on Tuesday, allowing me to stay an extra day. I did that several times.

Q. What projects do you have in the works right now?

I completed a film which is a true ensemble with very equally-divided parts. It’s called All the Rage. Jeff Daniels, Anna Paquin, Giovanni Ribisi, Robert Forster, and David Schwimmer are in it. The movie basically deals with gun control. It impacts the lives of these people so negatively in these different story lines. I’m doing a film in Dublin, Ireland, about an Irish journalist named Veronica Guerin. She was murdered a couple of years ago for writing stories about the Dublin mob.

Q. Looking back on your career — both stage and movies — which work(s) stands out the most to you?

My favorite play is one that I did called And the Nightingale Sang. That was a show that Steppenwolf did and I think I was about 27 when I played that part. It’s a really sweet story written by C.P. Taylor, an English writer. Basically, it’s a love story that takes place during World War II. The twist is that it’s got a crazy English family tucked into it. I did it in Chicago and then it got launched in New York which is how I made my transition between the cities. After that, I got an agent and started auditioning for other theatre parts as well as television and film.

I was so thrilled. It was the next step that I really needed to take. I had been so happy working with Steppenwolf and very content, but it was the right time. Everyone in the company had started doing a few more things outside. It was actually the second Steppenwolf show that went to New York, the first being True West with John Malkovich and Gary Sinese. That’s when the producers from New York started flying to Chicago to see what the companies were doing. I think Steppenwolf has had at least seven or eight shows make the transition to New York.

Q. Do you ever make it back to your hometown of Rochelle? And how do the folks there react to your celebrity status?

I do go back at least once a year and I’ve taken Sadie almost every year since she was born. We go back for anywhere from a week to two weeks in the summertime, and this year we were able to go for Christmas, as well. There’s not as much, you know, brouhaha, when I return now. There is a new deli that has pictures on the wall for people who sort of came from the area who have done well. There is one young man from Rochelle High School who, tragically, was hit by a car and is now a paraplegic. But he’s done very well in Special Olympics and has had a successful career as wheelchair racer, so they have pictures of him. They have a lot of photos from the film, A Thousand Acres, which was shot there a couple of summers ago. Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, and Jason Robards were in that film. They have some of Joan Allen’s up there, also.

Q. Do you have a sandwich named after you?

No, there’s not a sandwich named after me, but there is a high school senior who’s trying to get a street named after me. A street by the high school doesn’t have a name so he’s campaigning to have it named Joan Allen Avenue or something. (Chuckle.)

Q. A question for the women who might read this. What’s it like to get a foot rub from John Travolta (Face/Off)?

(Hardy laugh.) I didn’t know it was going to happen because it wasn’t in the script. Before we shot the scene we were in makeup looking at scripts and staging the scene with John Woo (the film’s director), who is just the loveliest man. He was blocking (describing) the scene and said, “I think John (Travolta) will come over and give you a foot massage or something.” I was like, “Alright. Uh, are we finished with the blocking?” I wanted to go back and shave my legs because I hadn’t done that yet. So, I was kind of shy about it... and embarrassed. But, you know, it was pretty nice in the end. What can you say? (Laughing.) It’s more intimate, almost, than kissing somebody. It was like, “Oh, my god!” (Laugh again.) And then he ran his hands up my legs and I was like, “Oooh-kay.” (Laugh.)

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